


The Floating City of Helicanth

by SonOfaChipwich



Series: The Season After Spring [1]
Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22278886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonOfaChipwich/pseuds/SonOfaChipwich
Summary: Hella, Adaire, and Adelaide, accompanied by Rix and Rowe and Barbelo, travel the Rhizome after the events of Spring in Hieron.
Relationships: Adaire Ducarte/Adelaide Tristé, Adaire Ducarte/Adelaide Tristé/Hella Varal, Adaire Ducarte/Hella Varal, Adelaide Tristé/Hella Varal
Series: The Season After Spring [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1603627
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2
Collections: Secret Samol 2019





	1. Every Branch a Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nyala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyala/gifts).



> Thanks to Nyala for the very broad prompt, which let me sorta run wild with this idea. It also happened to be almost exactly the same as what I requested! There is never enough Hella content. I plan on continuing this series past these first few chapters, with the Hella family exploring a new city or place in the Rhizome in each work. Enjoy!

The sky was full of life. Stems, roots, and branches tangled and twisted. Cities nestled in the hollows of trees and sheltered under the petals of flowers. Above, two suns circled each other in a corkscrew dance around a planet-thick vine. Beneath those suns, a family traveled.

Hella Varal’s gait was measured and martial. She stroked her donkey’s coarse mane as she walked, eyes fixed on a distant point. Before her, she pictured a tower and a school, already miles behind her, and the faces of the friends there. She thought about writing letters. 

“Hella, where are you right now?” asked Adaire Ducarte, hastening her prim step to match her partner’s long stride. Hella blinked, shaking herself from reminiscence. Adaire’s tone was even and her face betrayed no emotion, but Hella read her concern in the slight tilt of her head and the way she fussed with her gloves just so. 

A small, loud voice piped from the donkey cart. “Uh, she’s right next to you! What are you, blind?” Rowe’s head popped into view over the siding, bits of straw sticking to his hair. 

“Nuh uh, she is not!” said his sister, Rix. She turned to scowl at him from her seat at the front of the cart, gripping the donkey’s lead tight. “And anyway, that’s not even what she meant! It was a finger of speech!” 

“Speeches doesn’t have hands!” Rowe shot back. “How can it have fingers?”

“It’s not real fingers, it just means when you lie but it’s okay because you’re not even tricking anyone.” Rix turned back toward the path with a satisfied nod. Rowe, still frowning skeptically, sunk back into the cart to resume his nap. 

Hella chuckled, shaking her head as she looked back to Adaire, the hard lines of her face softening with warmth. “I was just thinking that its been a while since I wrote Hadrian a letter.”

“I guess it has.” Adaire produced a small, leatherbound notebook from a pocket in her skirts and skimmed through it. “Although, nothing really interesting has happened since the last one. Just a lot of walking.”

“We just left a town where everything was made of mushrooms!”

“Eh, if you’ve seen one mushroom, you’ve seen them all.”

“But some of the mushrooms were people!”

“Hm. Good point. That might interest him.” Adaire’s mouth quirked ever so slightly upward. 

A faint sound of lapping waves and chiming bells stopped Hella from protesting further. Ahead of them, the air shimmered pearlescent, and a woman’s form stepped forth. 

“Aunt Adelaide!” Rix and Rowe shouted in unison, scrambling from the cart in a clumsy rush to greet the goddess of Death. They rumpled the skirts of her opal sundress as they hugged her. “Did you bring us any presents from heaven?”

“I haven’t made it nice enough to be called heaven yet,” she replied, bending to them with regal patience. “But I do have something for you. A very skilled jeweler came to us some weeks ago.” From her elaborate crown of twisted braids, she pulled two mother-of-pearl hairpins, placing them in the childrens’ outstretched hands. They gasped, cradling their prizes like baby birds.

“They’re so pretty!” Rix said. “Oh oh, Rowe, let me braid your hair like hers!” She pulled her brother back into the cart and began to twist his shaggy chestnut mop into something resembling the queen’s intricate pleats. 

“I apologize for being away for so long,” she said, falling into step on Hella’s other side. “There has been a large influx of new arrivals to Adularia. Though so much has changed, the people have not forgotten how to war.”

“I doubt that would change, no matter what the world was made of,” Adaire said. 

Hella sighed. “People are scared. Everything they know has changed, it’s all so big and weird, and it’s just, it’s easier to lash out at the things that scares you than to understand them.”

Adelaide took her hand. “The shock will pass. The Rhizome is almost incomprehensible now, but I have lived a long time. I know how quickly unimaginable circumstances can come to feel completely normal.” She raised an eyebrow. “You know that too, Queenkiller.” 

Hella fixed her eyes on the path as she blushed.   
Adaire took her other hand. “And hey, at least the mushroom people were friendly. Not everyone is freaking out.” She squeezed, lightly. 

A sharp bark issued from thin air, and the sound of running paws. A scruffy, wiry dog appeared out of nothing and jumped up at Adaire, grunting and whining for attention. 

“Hey, Barbelo, where have you been?” she asked, vigorously scratching the dog’s ears. The two flickered in and out of sight as he rolled onto his back and Adaire rubbed his stomach, informing him in a businesslike way what a good boy he was. Barbello had never been great at using his invisibility power, Hella thought, and he absolutely lost control when he was this excited. She relaxed her shoulders and dropped her hand from where it had jumped to the hilt of her sword. Barbelo had been gone scouting for some time now, and a few times before he had come running back like this to warn of a danger ahead.

Instead, once Adaire had finished rubbing his belly, he loped up the path to the crest of a high hill and sniffed the air delicately before pointing, head extended and front paw held to his chest. 

“He found somethin’!” Rix cried. “Good boy, Barbelo!”

“I hope it’s somewhere to eat,” Rowe whined. “I’m starving!”

Hella walked ahead of the cart to Barbelo’s side. Following the line of his pointing, she saw a towering vine twisting around the branch they walked on. All along the vine were leaves curved into the shapes of pitchers with wide, round bottoms and delicately fluted tops. The wind shifted, and Hella caught the scent of citrus and sugarcane, alcohol and rotting leaves. She felt strangely drawn to it, a desire to surround and immerse herself in that sweetness. Her eyes narrowed.

Adelaide, coming up the hill, pointed to a pitcher-leaf that hung low and close to their branch. “There are people in there. A small city’s worth. I can feel their lives. But I know this sort of vine. What it catches in its leaves, it kills. But they are not dying so quickly as that.”

“Could be they’re immune to the acid stuff in there,” Adaire suggested, patiently leading the stubborn donkey to the hillcrest. “Or maybe they drained it so they could build homes. We need to resupply soon, so it’s worth a look.”

Hella crossed her arms as she stared at the pitcher leaf. “I dunno. I really don’t want to get eaten by a plant. And how would we get up there, anyway?”

Adelaide peered ahead, eyes flashing pearlescent. “Look closely,” she said. “Just there.” Details sharpened in Hella’s vision as she spoke, and she could now make out a series of thick cables descending ramrod-straight from the bottom of the pitcher plant. A wide wooden platform, suspended between them, was rising toward the plant, while another shape, Hella guessed it was a counterweight of some sort, descended. 

Adaire drew in a short sharp breath, which, Hella thought, was her equivalent of hopping up and down in delight. “Whoever’s up there,” Adaire said, “they’re fine craftspeople. I say we give it a shot.”

Adelaide dipped her stately chin. “Agreed.” 

Rowe, hair tangled beyond recognition, waved both hairpins like tiny shortswords and shouted his agreement. 

Rix scowled, thinking hard. “Okay,” she decided, “But only if we get to throw some stuff in the plant juice. 

Hella, to whom that same idea had occurred a moment ago, said, “Alright, but stick together and keep your eyes open. We don’t know if they’re friendly or not.”

“We have nothing to fear, Hella,” said Adelaide. “Even when you make enemies, they end up becoming your friends.” 

The sticky-sweet scent thickened as the family went forth to explore.


	2. The Fisherman's Lack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hella makes a friend in a dive bar.

The Floating City of Helicanth had plenty of bars, and Hella had found the rowdiest one of the lot. After a brief, tense discussion with the elevator guards, she had determined that the city, though wary of outsiders, was at least not openly hostile. Adelaide had taken the cart and the children to find supplies, Adaire had gone with Barbelo to, she explained, “do some networking,” and Hella had been entrusted with finding places of interest, as well as some quick paid work, if there was any to be found. 

Now, she entered a dive called The Fisherman’s Lack. The scent of pipe smoke, sweat, and strong beer drove the pitcher’s cloying, nectary musk from her nose as she moved carefully around tables and booths crowded with workers drinking off their weariness. She took a stool at the end of the bar, ordered a shot of liquor with a terse few words, and listened to the bar’s ambient chatter.

She deduced that in Helicanth, “fisherman” didn’t mean what it did in the wider world. Stocky Wharvers, dark, lithe humans, and a few of what Hella had been internally referring to as eel-elves came in and out in small groups, discussing the day’s haul and the conditions on the water, but they made no mention of actual fish, nor nets, rods, or harpoons. Instead, she heard them mention salvage and scrap. “Nothing but worthless junk today,” complained a young woman with silver-gray hair and huge, thick-soled rain boots. “Some real treasure on my last outing!” enthused an orange-and-black eel-person clad in heavy oilskin cloak and skirts. 

As she pondered, a heavyset old Wharver hoisted themself onto the stool next to hers. They grunted at the bartender, which seemed to serve as an order, as they were quickly upending a mug of a spicy-smelling and distinctly green beverage and waving for another.

They caught Hella staring from the corner of their age-sunken eye. “Hoy, stranger. I ken my quaffin’s impressive, but ye needn’t merely gawp. Join me! Lachlan!” they called to the bartender, “Draw this bruiser a nectar lager afore she thumps me for mine!” Hella caught the mug which slid toward her down the smooth-worn bartop. The Wharver raised one shaggy eyebrow and nodded their head at the drink. Cautiously, she took a sip. It was primarily sweet, with an initial wash of a peppery cinnamon flavor that made her nose itch before resolving into a mellow sourness that lingered on her tongue. 

“Huh. Not bad,” she said, and took a long pull. 

“Ahahey!” the Wharver half laughed, half wheezed. “It’s rare a stranger that can stomach nectar ale! I like you, bruiser. Give me yer name if you have en, and yer lack if ye know it!” 

"I'm Hella," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her arm. "Folk call me Queenkiller. And I lack coin and supplies, which is why my family and I stopped here." 

"Well, Hella Queenkiller, I am Ainsley Fairmeasure, and I lack drinking companions loyal enough to listen to my stories, no matter how many rounds I buy! E'nt that so, ye pack a' ingrates and backbiters!" They spun on their stool then, addressing the busy tavern with their scorn. Several patrons groaned and jeered in a good-mannered fashion, and someone threw a handful of salted nuts at them. They turned back, waving as if to shoo them all away. 

"Ehhh, who needs 'em? Not I, when I've Hella Queenkiller to regale! So, Hella, sit with me a spell and listen to me jaw, and I'll fill yer belly with drink and yer head with tales of daring! Then, tomorrow, I'll take ye out on the best damn scavenger skiff this town has got, and we'll see if ye can earn yer keep!" 

Hella, amused, thirsty, and eager at the prospect of working on a scavenger skiff, whatever that may be, listened intently as Ainsley, barely touching their drink, spun yarns of adventure on underground seas which must have existed in the deepest strata, before the New Spring ripped through the Reconfigured world, weaving the laminated layers together in a chaotic quilt of flora. Partway through a bawdy anecdote featuring a comely halfling maiden, a giant cave catfish named Beefeater, and a series of ill-advised dares, Ainsley trailed off and began snoring, their weathered head resting on the bartop. Lachlan the bartender tossed a blanket over them, as practiced as his ale-pouring. Hella, slightly buzzed from the six nectar ales she had downed, thanked the unconscious Wharver for the stories and promised to meet them in the morning. Lachlan nodded, assuring her that they'd be there when she showed up.


	3. The Moon and the Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quiet evening in a strange new city.

Her goal accomplished, Hella went to meet her family, as they had earlier agreed, at a hostel for travelers and traders near the bottom of the city. As she descended through winding streets , steep staircases, and baffling tunnels, she attempted to make sense of Helicanth’s geography.

On the elevator ride up into the pitcher plant, Hella had had a momentary terror that they would be plunged head-first into a sea of vegetable acid, but that fear bloomed into awe as they passed through a hole in the bottom of the plant. They rose into a glass-clear crystal tube etched with characters which she recognized as Wharver-runes like the ones she had seen on the Bouy. Through the crystal, she beheld a sea of swirling yellow-green liquid. Indistinct shapes moved here and there, obscured by haze and distance. 

Before she had a chance to reckon with this sight, the elevator rose above the surface of the liquid, revealing the interior of the pitcher plant. The curved, fibrous walls soared to the aperture at the top, many times higher than the tower of the Last University. She judged that it would take the better part of a day’s hard rowing to cross from one side to the other. As they rose, the height afforded her a view of the things floating in the liquid. Giant insects, shipwrecks, and ruins of all description bobbed and floundered in the green sea. And above, Helicanth itself; a jagged stone iceberg floating in midair, tethered to the walls and water by huge black iron chains. Structures jutted out at sickening angles on the top, sides, and bottom of the flying hulk. Bridges and cables connected the main body to numerous smaller masses, including the one in which the crystal elevator tube terminated. A suspended cable car shuttled them, donkey cart and all, to the main city, and through its windows she had looked straight on at the tops of heads and the roofs of buildings growing closer. Things stuck to the surfaces of these floating stones like insects clinging to ceilings, like they had their own peculiar gravity. Wharver enchantment was not Hella’s most despised form of magic, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. She wondered, though, why it hadn’t gone away when Samol died, like Fantasmo’s brand of arcana had. Perhaps it was more like Benjamin’s augury. She shivered, remembering the power he had displayed which earned him the name Frost Shepherd. 

As she approached the hostel, she put these musings out of her mind. Adelaide, Adaire, Rix, and Rowe sat on benches at a round stone table in the small garden in front of the hostel. They were finishing the last bits of their dinner as she arrived, the crusts of various hand breads and the last few ripe berries. Rix furtively slipped Barbelo a cheese rind under the table. Rowe hid his obvious giggle behind his hand. Adaire, still talking to Adelaide, glanced at him with an eyebrow raised, feigning ignorance. Rowe ducked under the table to escape scrutiny, and then scuttled out under his sister’s bench as he saw Hella approach. 

“Aunt Hella!” he cried as he ran to hug her around knees. Barbelo followed him, barking at the commotion. Hella ruffled his hair. “Sorry we ate without you,” he said. “You took too long and we got hungry.”

“That’s okay, bud, I’m not hungry.” The drinks Ainsley bought her had been a meal unto themselves. “I may have found some work,” she said as she took a seat next to Adaire. “A Wharver named Ainsley offered to take me out on their scavenging skiff. Seems like a lot of people here make their living by scavenging stuff from the... the water? The plant acid?”

“Phytotelmata, dear,” said Adelaide, beginning to pleat and braid Rix’s hair to match the improvement she had made on Rowe’s previous hairdo. 

“Yeah, that,” said Hella. “Did you see all the shipwrecks and stuff down there? Or, uh, up there, I guess.” Hella craned her neck upward, which gave her a view of the caustic sea and its debris field like a greenish sky full of textured constellations. Directly “below” her, through the mass of Helicanth, would be the opening of the pitcher plant. Her stomach lurched.   
“Yes,” said Adair, studying the inverted sky. “And I have no idea how it all got there. That building there,” she pointed to a ruin near the elevator tube, “looks Ordennan for sure.” Hella nodded, recognizing the deja-vu familiarity of architecture from an early, aborted version of her ruined home. “But some of those spires there look kind of like Rosemerrow. And the shipwrecks, I think some of them are Nacrish. It’s all over the place. Is something bringing it all here? And why?”

“If I understand correctly,” Adelaide mused, “Wharvers and their homes have a singular way of interacting with space. Or perhaps it is an effect they have on their surroundings, simply by existing. Regardless, proximity and temporality mean little where Wharvers are concerned. Adularia has benefited significantly from their spatial know-how. And their cuisine. They have this way of slow-cooking meat, we simply must get some while we’re here.”

“So you think that things left over from before the plants are somehow attracted to the Wharvers? Or maybe the Wharvers draw them in?” Hella asked.

“Perhaps,” Adelaide replied. “Though that is merely my semi-educated guess.”

“Well,” said Adaire, “However it gets there, I’m not surprised folk want to scavenge it. Could be some really valuable stuff left in those ruins, not to mention the raw material, stone being so rare now.”

They sat a moment in silence. Hella reeled at the realization that yes, Adaire was right. Stones were rare now. There was no more earth from which to hew them. Wood aplenty to build with, endless vines like flexible, organic steel, but there were only so many rocks left in the world. But, she realized, that had always been true. There were just so many of them before that running out hadn’t been a going concern. She felt a pang of strange grief for every stone she had ever skimmed across the ocean as a child. The ocean. Where was the ocean?

“May I accompany you tomorrow, Hella?” Adelaide asked. “You know how much I enjoy sailing with you.”

Hella smiled. “Of course! But it’s not going to be a pleasure cruise. It’ll be hard physical labor. Are you up for it, your majesty? You might break a nail.”

Adelaide chuckled behind her silk-gloved hand. “Shepherding the dead may not be physical labor in the traditional sense, but I assure you it is hard work. You would not believe how difficult it is to redirect the spirit of a gnoll as it falls toward the Nothing. They kick and bite no matter which way they’re going! Yes, Hella, I’m more than up for it. We will all break our fast together, and then you and I will go to meet this Wharver friend of yours. Adaire, do you mind tending to the little ones tomorrow?”

“Not at all,” Adaire said. “I’ve actually got a lesson of sorts planned for them. And I need to run an errand.”

“Wonderful.” Adelaide glanced over to the grassy patch where Rix and Rowe had begun playing one of their favorite games, “see who can yell ‘Arrell’ the loudest without getting too scared.” Rix swore that if you said it too loud, the lich would appear and put you in a magic bubble full of monsters and leafy green vegetables. She always won. “You have such a way with them,” Adelaide said, turning back to Adaire. “I admire that. I don’t know that I have the temperament to be a mother, but I find I enjoy being an aunt.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say mother,” Adaire replied. “I’d be a terrible mother. Are you kidding? My kid would end up worse than those two. They like me, I like them, and I’m trying to work with what we’ve got. It’s more like they’re my apprentices. Or like I’m their big sister who isn’t the best influence, but not a terrible one.” 

Adelaide laughed aloud then, and Adaire joined in quietly, tilting her head down toward her chest like she did when Hella made her laugh. Hella worried sometimes when she watched Adaire and Adelaide interact. They were unerringly courteous with each other, but their words held an edge which she couldn’t place. Sometimes she thought it was jealous rivalry, a competition for dominance. Other times, she chalked it up to the natural result of their very different but similarly strong personalities. 

Before, when she had asked Adaire how she felt about travelling with Adelaide, Adaire said, “She is one of the most dedicated people I have ever met. I appreciate that. And I appreciate how you feel about her.” This was followed by a sudden, deep kiss, and a rare, broad smile from Adaire as she looked up into Hella’s eyes. Her round, open face reminded Hella of the moon that had left them, taken by some god on some mission or another. She took the same comfort from gazing on Adaire’s face as she often had from staring at the moon on a clear night; it seemed distant at times, but it was always there, always facing her, devoted and distinct, a constant companion. She preferred Adaire, she thought, and smiled to herself. The moon wasn’t half as good a kisser. 

Adelaide’s response had confused her a little more. “Oh, Hella,” she said, placing a hand on the side of Hella’s face, “I do not think I have anything to fear from Adaire Ducarte.” Her eyes had flashed then the same way they did when she talked about coaxing a particularly stubborn spirit away from the hot stuff and into Adularia, or when she perfectly executed the recipe for a complex pastry. Hella had no idea what she meant, and she wouldn’t explain further. If Adaire was her moon, she thought, then Adelaide was her sun. Warm, nurturing, and necessary, but difficult to stare at for too long. She was like the original sun, anyway. She was also like the multitude of new suns in that Hella still wasn’t sure how exactly she still existed or did what she did, but knew it had something to do with swords.

A warming sun, a constant moon. And when they met, they didn’t eclipse each other, but seemed to heighten and amplify. She hoped they would not come to resent each other. She would do everything in her power to keep them happy. 

The three women chatted, the two children played, and the dog laid down in a warm spot to nap. Soon, all had retired to their rooms in the hostel or their palaces in the afterlife. Hella held Adaire’s sleeping head close to her chest, her mind dancing with hope, apprehension, and joy at the thought of what her family’s future might hold.


End file.
